The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1887-12-22
Markets for Wives.

The four great markets for wives in
New York, writes a correspondent of
the Philadelphia Press. are the Sunday
school, the big stores and factories, the
street, and the boarding-houses. I
have purposely arranged them in the
order above because the greatest mat
rimonial markets are the Sunday
schools and the least are the boarding
houses. Marriages are made in board
ing-houses, but the average boarding
house keepers daughter is more apt to
end an old maid than a wife. The rea-
son is that it seems not to be good for
the girls for men to see them too much
or in too varied range of employ
ment. 1t takes the romance and poetry
out of the wife hunters head and the
charm from a girls personality for her
to be seen on her knees scrubbing, or
with her head in towel sweeping, or
sitting ashes in a sloyenIy wrapper.
OF course, there are girls who can do
every sort of homework with such an
air and grace that even leYel-headed
lover will try to steal the broom or
ashes-sifter she has held in order to
have it for keepsake, but those girls
are not apt to be developed in the dull
SASN OANNA va
routine.
In the Sunday schools the girls look
their very best. Not only do thous-
ands of tender-hearted young fellows
attend them in order to develop cir
Gle of lady friends for themselves, but
just so do the myriad of Young wo-
men, who are either here without their
families or who are shut up in the fac
tories all day and live in parlorless
tenements by night, seek the same re-
igious resorts for similar ends. 1t is
a curious function that New York Sum
day schools perform. They are resort
ed to by about 700 Cinnamon, who 90
there simply to learn English, and by
thousands of Christians who go there
to get mated.
When say the big shopping stores
are great matrimonial markets 1 do
not mean to have it inferred that the
girls who stand behind the counters
are given to wedding the male custom
ers they wait upon. Such things de
happen, | suppose, but not frequently
enough for consideration, the fact be-
ing that nothing could be worse for a
counter girl in a big New York store
than for her to be courted while on
duty. If her employers did not dis
charge her the other girls would tor.
ment her beyond endurance. Meet
ings between the girls and their beaux
on the way home from work are not to
be taken into consideration, for the
lasses go home in troops, and are mer-
ciless teasers, so that this is also a rare
occurrence. One of the big shopping
stores, by the way, employs detectives
to see that no young fellows hang about
the store at closing time to meet the
counter girls. But there is field for
matrimony that is directly in the
stores, and is exceedingly fruitful. The
male employees, buyers, heads of de-
partments, men clerks, cashiers, and
even the members of the firms get
very many wives from among the girls
whom they meet every day and grow
to admire, if their qualities are such as
recommend them. Acquaintance thus
made lead to visits at the girls homes,
to evening companionship, and to we'd
lock. These same men and women in
the big stores, by the way, are among
the hosts that attended the Sunday
schools.
There are actually streets set aside
for courtship by the parlorless poor.
Upper Eighth avenue, where the little
shops are; lower Second avenue, past
the houses of the old fogy rich, and
the bottom of Broadway, where all the
great shipping and express offices are
closed and dark-there are the great
filtration promenades of the tenement
boys and girls. There are stupid folk
who see the long procession of gig
Cling girls, in their best bows and
and imagine them to be off
the path of virtue, or slipping Off But
these are not the places where such
girls are found, and he who thinks ill
of these girls had better not presume
upon his ignorance or he will find them
well able to take care of themselves.
No; they have put on their second-best
gowns, and the young mechanics and
porters have put on their best coats
and plastered their locks with oil, and
both sexes have sailed out to meet and
fiirt and pair off and walk home. They
don't know it, but they cannot help do
ing so. It's nature.